Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked for the acceleration of the reform of administrative procedures relating to business establishment, re-arrangement and dissolution, looking forward to gradually abolishing barriers to the business and investment environment.

According an announcement of the office of the Government on September 18, the Prime Minister requested cutting by half the average procedural duration needed for business registration, re-arrangement and dissolution prior to December 31, 2014.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MoPI) was assigned to screen all procedures that disturbed businesses for removal while refining the process and formalities required for business dissolution to make it easy for those who wish to get out of the market.

In addition, the PM has requested speeding up the application of information technology and improving the staff running business registration activities.

The national business registration information network must be expanded further and the one-stop-shop mechanism must be multiplied to enable quicker market accession for businesses, he said.

The MoPI was asked to work together with the Ministry of Finance to run a system to issue businesses’ codes automatically.

At his recent working session with the MoPI, the PM stressed that at the 11th Congress, the Party stated clearly that improving the national competiveness and proactively integrating globally are aimed to serve the country’s fast and sustainable development as well as its industrialization and modernization.

“Institutional improvements and administrative reform is always the cornerstone of the Government’s affairs. Each ministry and locality needs to press ahead with the screening work to make institutions and mechanisms complete, thus making it easier for investment attraction and competitiveness enhancement,” he said.

The Government chief also asked the MoPI to quicken the perfection of the Investment Law (Revised) and revise existing legal regulations to clarify the prohibited business lines and conditional ones.

As of the end of July, 76 State-owned enterprises had been re-arranged, of which 55 underwent equitisation, two were dissolved, 15 merged and three proposed to declare bankrupt. Only one enterprise was sold.

According to the Steering Committee for Enterprise Renewal and Development, the goal of equitising 432 State-owned enterprises between now and the end of 2015 is feasible.